


Weight

by The_Sickfic_Sideblog



Series: Sick Klance [5]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fever, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Langst, M/M, Moral Dilemmas, Sickfic, Vomiting, klance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-10-04 00:28:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10262624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Sickfic_Sideblog/pseuds/The_Sickfic_Sideblog
Summary: Lance has to make a tough decision. He pays the consequences.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This didn't start out this angsty, but here we are. Focuses more on the angst than the sickfic or the Klance. Marked mature for heavy topics, just to be safe.

It was a particularly depressing mission.

The Blue Paladin had to make a near-impossible choice. Surrender Voltron, or surrender a resource-heavy planet and all its inhabitants. Death wasn’t mentioned in either scenario, but it was very heavily implied. In the end, Lance made the choice to save Voltron on the basis that they would save many many other planets by defeating Zarkon in the long run.

But that didn’t mean a whole planet's worth of deaths wasn’t weighing on his soul.

Everyone on the team agreed that Lance made the better decision - there was no  _ right _ one. They let him sit through it for a few days, not asking anything extra of him, not pushing his boundaries. Keith was the only one close enough to him to talk it out with. This would clearly affect him for the rest of his life.

But Lance was a trooper. Given enough time, he’d bounce back and start acting like his normal self. Right?

Keith kept a very close eye on him. Instead of goofing off in his free time, he’d start going to the training deck alone. Records showed his difficulty increasing steadily. Keith was only a bit worried about that - he himself would go to the training deck to relieve stress, and at least Lance was improving. Additionally, all the heavy training was helping him sleep, so Keith thought. Initially, he’d have to keep waking Lance up from nightmares, but as time went on, Lance wasn’t making a sound.

The reality of the situation showed itself a week and a half after Lance made the decision. When Keith got up to get breakfast, Lance was already there, pushing the food goo around his plate.

“Mmmmmm good morning, Lance..” Keith groaned, sleep still hanging onto his eyes. He dragged his feet over to his boyfriend, wrapping him in a hug from behind and kissing his cheek, “How’d you sleep?”

“Not very good....” Lance replied, giving Keith a small nose bump in return.

“Yeah? You were quiet the entire night.” Keith walked over to the food goo machine, dispensing himself a plate of the green nutrients.

“S’cause I wasn’t sleeping. Was on the training deck.”

Keith turned around, “All night?” Now he could see the extremely dark circles under Lance’s eyes, contrasting how pale he looked. Lance nodded, not daring to look Keith in the eye. Keith returned to the table.

“Why were you training all night?”

Lance didn’t say anything.

“Lance?”

Still no response. Keith physically turned Lance’s chin to look him in the eyes.

“I...” The Blue Paladin swallowed, unable to lie to someone he cared about so much, “...I need to be better. I’ve been training and training but I’m not getting any better.”

“Better? Better at what?”

“Better at everything,” a tear rolled down his cheek as Keith felt his bottom lip quiver, “If I was better, I might’ve been able to save that planet. I might’ve been able to....” he trailed off.

Keith’s heart completely sank. He wanted nothing more than to scream the mantra he’d been telling Lance for days: ‘it’s not your fault, you did the best you could’. But he knew that wouldn’t help. What would help were hugs, cuddles, and extra sleep.

Keith released Lance’s chin, and took his hands instead, “Lance? Lance-Love, here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna eat some food, and we’re gonna get you back to bed, okay? You said you trained all night?”

Lance nodded, “For a few days now....haven’t slept in days....”

Keith’s heart went from sinking to going a million miles an hour, “Alright. Food, then sleep, okay?”

Lance swallowed a bit. His pallor seemed to grow paler every time Keith said the word ‘food’. “I’m not hungry...”

Keith squeezed Lance’s hands, “Please? You need something. If you’ve been training this much, you’ve been burning extra calories, you need to get that back.”

Lance sighed and picked up his spoon, and Keith went to the intercom to tell Shiro that the both of them wouldn’t be participating the in exercises today. Lance jammed the spoonful of food goo into his mouth and swallowed. Keith narrowed his eyebrows. Something was up. He hung up on Shiro and sat down in the chair next to Lance.

“Is something wrong?” Keith asked, “You seem-”

Lance’s spoon clattered to the table and his stomach groaned loud enough to reach Keith’s ears. Before he could do anything, Lance was bringing up streams of bile with only the spoonful of goo he’d swallowed. Most of the episode was muscle-straining retches because Lance hadn’t eaten much in the previous days. Before long, the entirety of the chair and Lance’s pajama bottoms were covered in vomit and tears.

Keith’s tears were in the mix as well.

“I-It’s alright, Lance-Love...just try to breathe, we’ll get it cleaned up...” he tried to clean himself up before Lance could see his worried state, “God, I...I didn’t know you were staying up all night, I would’ve...I shouldn’t have thought...”

The two eventually quieted themselves. Keith slipped his hand up to Lance’s forehead, confirming his unhappy speculation. Feverish. He moved the same hand to Lance’s back.

“Feel like you’re done....?”

Lance took a moment to breathe and swallow, but he nodded. He let himself be escorted back to the bedrooms, trying not to drag a trail of sick from his pajama pants the entire way.

As luck would have it, the other paladins caught them at the elevator - Pidge, Hunk, and Shiro all exiting the same one that Keith and Lance intended to take. With Lance’s emotional state, Keith didn’t want them all talking at once and fussing over him, so he spoke quickly.

“Lance got sick, I’m taking him back to bed, I’ll fill you in later, sorry about the mess.”

He slammed the elevator doors shut and hit their floor. He then took a deep breath and focused all his attention on the sick paladin next to him.

“How’s your stomach...?”

Lance hiccuped, “N-not good...”

It was a long trek back to Lance’s bedroom. His knees almost gave out on him, so Keith had to carry him bridal-style to the bathroom so he could dry heave again. Nothing came up, making it infinitely more painful for both of them.

With a quick shower rinse and a change of clothes, Keith got Lance back into bed. Instead of immediately going off to get medicine and a bucket, he took a few minutes to soothe the Blue Paladin into almost a sleep-like state.

“I’ll be back soon...” he promised, smoothing Lance’s hair down from dishevelment, “I’m just going to grab some things that’ll help you feel better.”

“N-no....I can go to training, ‘m fine....I need to get better....”

Keith almost let his frustration show, but kept it in check, “You are not going to training. You are staying right here where I can keep an eye on you and make sure you’re okay. You can’t get better until you get better.”

It wasn’t the most articulate, but it got the point across. Lance nodded weakly in defeat and settled into the blankets. With a warm kiss on the forehead, Keith left the room and broke into a sprint.

He almost collided with the other paladins, who looked just as concerned.

“What’s wrong with Lance?” Pidge asked, “There’s vomit all over the floor!”

Keith was still panting from running so fast, “He says he hasn’t slept in days...said he’s been on the training deck all night trying to get ‘better’...whatever that means...”

“Is he still torn up about...?” Hunk trailed. The others knew what he meant. Keith nodded.

“Yeah, and I think it’s making him sick...Or it’s making him do things that’re making him sick or something.”

Shiro rested his head in his hands, still waking up, “God damn it, Lance,” he muttered, “He should’ve told us he was still having a hard time...”

Pidge nodded in agreement, “Why does he think training all night every night will make him better? It’ll only make him worse! Especially if he’s sick!”

Keith felt all the anger and frustration bubbling up.

“How could he do this?” Hunk added, “He knows we’re here for him, right?”

_ “Because he thinks he fucked up!” _

The paladins went silent.

“Because he thinks he could’ve made a better decision when there wasn’t one! He thinks that somehow if he was stronger, or faster, o-or whatever, he could’ve saved both us and the planet! But he couldn’t and he has an entire planet’s destruction on his shoulders! That’s how he could do this! And he’s too scared to tell anyone but me because he thinks everyone will hate him for it! So he’s pushing himself to the fucking limit and making himself fucking sick to make up for all the people he decided to kill!”

Keith’s breath slowed. For three long minutes, none of them said anything. Tears brimmed at the edge of the Red Paladin’s eyes, feeling more hot with anger than sadness. Truly, he wasn’t angry at the others. He was angry at the situation the world put his beloved in, and there was little he could do about it.

“I’ve got to get him some medicine-” he went to push past the others, but Shiro caught his arm.

“We’ll go get it. You should stay with Lance. He needs you the most right now.”

 


End file.
